


Celestial Motion

by charliescastiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Confessions of love, M/M, gross fluff, kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-26 09:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3846358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charliescastiel/pseuds/charliescastiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean stares at a star for a long time. It turns out that star is Cas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celestial Motion

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i wrote this whilst on a long journey home from university whilst looking at the stars and the countryside. i was inspired af. i hope you enjoy it.   
> please leave some thoughts if emotion is provoked.
> 
> title from the Twelve Titans Music song of the same name which i listened to a lot whilst writing this.

It’s one of those rare times where Dean has let Sam take the wheel of the Impala as they drive home to the bunker after an exhausting and tedious two week hunt which turned out to be just a poltergeist. At this point, when factoring in multiple apocalypses, a civil war in both heaven and hell and being stuck in a dimension entirely populated by Gods least wanted for an entire year, ghosts felt a little below their pay grade.

After a few hours of non-stop driving past hay bale after hay bale of America’s most interesting scenery, the conversation has lulled into a silence, but a comfortable silence, so unlike any of the awkward and tense ones that have filled the past few months.

Dean taps his head softly to whatever song is playing on the cassette for the fifteenth time that day, his eye half closed as the trees all blur into one. He stretches as much as is possible in the cramped space of the car, yawning widely. Sam glances sideways, then ends up yawning himself.

Since they are miles from anywhere, there are tons of bunches of stars visibly scattered across the sky, Dean even manages to pluck out a constellation or two from when he read that book on astronomy when he was eleven.

The stars seem to travel gracefully along with the speed of the car, yet simultaneously move nowhere at all. It makes him feel kind of dizzy, like when he would spin Sammy around in circles as a kid until they got so dizzy they had to lie back on the grass to catch their breath. They would look up at the clouds and how they moved and changed as the world turned endlessly, not holding on to anything. There were relatively few clouds right now, only a few small ones that floated companionless, suspended in the sky like they were just out of reach.

Like most people, he imagines, looking up at the night’s sky makes him feel really quite small, despite his relativity influential place with regards to whether the world will end that day. He takes a moment to think about how ridiculously complicated their lives have been, and how it never seems to stop. Not even in death, which doesn't hold much of a solid meaning for him anymore. Since he seems doomed to never actually experience it finitely.

He thinks about how the tiny specks of light he's looking at are in fact blindingly incomprehensibly bright, and also unimaginably old, how they are probably so far away that maybe they doesn't even exist anymore. Yet how they still seem full of so much life and wonder and beauty.

Dean doesn’t consider himself the kind of person who reflects upon his own existence very much, partly because world ending evil doesn’t conveniently stop for an existential crisis, but mainly because he fears that if he did, it would shatter him so irrevocably that he doesn’t think he’d be able to go on.

His eyes graze across the skyline, yet Dean is repeatedly drawn to the same star, he somehow can’t look away from the one that shines the brightest. Dean ends up staring at that star for a long, long while as if its reaching out to him, trying to communicate. He stares so long he isn't entirely sure whether he has actually fallen asleep.

Subconsciously, he becomes aware that the song on the cassette has changed, the low tones of _Knocking on Heaven’s Door_ drifting from the Impala’s speakers and it’s then that he remembers that this is Cas’ mixtape, the one Dean had spent hours putting together in order to give Cas an education in 'proper' music. Dean smiles fondly to himself, remembering the first time he had played it for Cas, who had just squinted in that way he always does when he's confused - which is different from his angry squint where his jaw juts forward as he grinds his teeth, but nor is it like the way his eyes crinkle delightfully when he's amused by something – and told him that heaven has no door to knock on. Nor does it have a stairway.

The star twinkles and glints, almost as if it is somehow smiling in return.

It’s also the tape that Dean plays when he misses Cas the most, since all the songs on there remind him of Cas. As the song fades out and into the next, he glances at Sam as if somehow he’s going to pick up on his thoughts and start taunting him. He doesn’t.

Dean looks to the cassette player and wonders where Cas is right now - he had spontaneously took off about three weeks ago without further explanation than “heaven” and Dean hadn’t heard from him since. He’d been doing that a lot lately, disappearing without an explanation for days or weeks. The worst part was, after Cas fell, Dean had sort of got used to Cas being around more, and not being able to leave him between one blink and then next.

Now he had his grace back and the door to heaven was sort of open, all that had changed. And it hurt Dean, a lot.

He looks back out of the window to that one bright star, which seems to flicker and dim now, it makes Dean feel sad. Dean misses Cas, more than he could or would ever voice. Most of the time he feels pathetic for feeling so empty when Cas isn’t by his side.

Hunting is never fun, but when he’s with Cas, it brightens the day. He thinks about the Fred Jones’ case a couple of years ago, and how much he’d enjoyed working with Cas. Or way back when the apocalypse was nigh and he took Cas to that brothel before summoning Raphael. As far as last night’s on Earth go, that one is pretty hard to beat. He’s uncertain whether he has laughed that hard before or since.

He thinks about the last time he saw Cas, they’d been preparing to go out on a hunt over the state line in Missouri in the morning, but Dean had persuaded Cas to stay up just a few more hours with him and marathon a bunch of old movies. They had gotten halfway through their second movie, _It Happened One Night,_ which classic or not, was still one of Dean’s favourite films, when Cas had sat up abruptly, clutching his head. Dean muted the television, turning to Cas and placing his arm on his shoulder and asking him if he was okay. Cas stood up, muttered “heaven” and flapped away.

Dean didn’t watch the end of the movie, but wondered if they would ever get to tear down their own Walls of Jericho. 

Back in the car, he laughs to himself, though it comes out as more of a pitiful grunt. Sam side-eyes him but doesn’t say anything.

He slept for a few hours earlier, but he still feels so exhausted. In fact doesn’t remember the last time he didn’t feel tired. He thinks about how wearing the past few years have been, on his happiness, on his aging bones, on his relationship with Sam and Cas.

At times he feels like he rarely sees Cas at all. The majority of the time, there is always something that pulls them apart; family, duty, death. Yet in those rare days in between apocalypses where the world is as quiet as is possible and everything is as okay as it can be, they seem drawn together with a force more powerful than he can make sense of.

His thoughts start to stray to how much he needs Cas, how he doesn't want to live without him, how he wants nothing more right now then to hold him, how, quite frankly, he loves him with everything that he is. He is more certain of this than anything else, and he can deny it to Sam and to Charlie and to Cas himself, but not to himself, not anymore. If he’s learnt anything in this shitty life, it’s that life is short, it’s unfair and most of the time it causes more pain than good, but once you find something worth holding on to, you’d better hold on tight and never ever let go.

And Dean is sick of putting the world first. He deserves this, he deserves to be loved and cared for. So Dean prays to Cas, that wherever he may be, please, please let him hear this. _Please come home, please come back to me._

Then the star disappears entirely.

Dean blinks twice, hard, then frowns to himself. After a moment, he shakes his head and relaxes back into his seat, as if he knows what is about to happen, that he’s waiting for it. So, when a moment later Cas shows up in the back seat, Dean doesn’t jump at all. In fact, he’s filled with an overwhelming sense of relief and affection.

"Hello, Dean." Castiel's voice breaks the lengthy silence, startling the life out of Sam, who proceeds to swerve the car hard to the left, making Dean hit his knees hard against the dashboard before yelping in pain.

"Fucking hell, Cas." Sam gasps, regaining control of the car. “We’ve talked about this, you know better.”

 “I’m sorry Sam, it was important, and my phone died.”

Against his better judgment, Dean actually chuckles, because it’s been six years and still, hearing an angel of God explain with complete lack of understanding and such genuine frustration that his phone has run out of battery still tickled him.

“What’s up Cas?” Dean asks, reaching his arm across the back of the seat so he can face Cas more fully, resisting the urge to touch.

“May we speak alone, Dean?” Cas clearly doesn’t know anything about this resistance, and he places his hand right by Dean’s.

“Uh, we’re kind of driving right now, can it wait?” Dean says, glancing between Cas and the road.

Cas sighs and rolls his eyes. “No, it cannot.” And oh, Dean didn’t expect that.

He purses his lips for a second, his eyes flitting to Sam’s questioning gaze and then back to Cas’ intense one.

“Sam, pull over.”

“We’re fifteen minutes from the bunker, Dean.” Sam argues.

Dean sighs loudly and rolls his eyes too, trying not to think too hard about how Cas most likely picked up that habit from watching him over the years. He turns to Sam to no doubt complain except when he looks over he’s not in the Impala anymore and Cas is removing his fingers from Dean’s forehead and they are in the bunker.

Dean blinks rapidly, looking around the room, looking himself up and down, looking at Cas who is just staring back at him with so much intensity its making Dean dizzy.

He doesn’t even have time to process anything because Cas is crowding into his personal space, maintaining eye contact the entire time and now they are within brushing distance and Cas is moving with the urgency of a dying man trying to convey his last wish and Dean is scared and intrigued and completely frozen.

“I heard you.” Is all Cas says as if that’s explanation enough.

“You, heard me?” Dean asks in response slightly stunted, his brow furrowed.

“Yes. I felt your longing, your pain and regret, your hope and love. Love for me.” He pauses, his eyes flicking away from Dean’s for the briefest moment. “It was… overwhelming.”

“Well don’t sugar coat it, Cas.” Dean chokes out.

Cas narrows his eyes in that adorable way as he tries to work through his own feelings about Dean _to_ Dean. “You have changed me irrevocably, Dean. You make me feel things that, as an angel, should be impossible. I would do anything for you, to keep you safe, to make you happy, I would dedicate my life to you.” He pauses, then continues so quietly that Dean has to strain to hear. “I have.”

Dean flinches, unsure whether Cas is angry at him for destroying everything he had; his reputation, his family, his faith, for turning everything he knew about what it means to exist upside down, for always having to clean up Dean’s messes. Hell, if Dean were Cas, he’d be pretty pissed.

And as Dean is working his way down this spiral of self-hatred and doubt, Castiel leans forward and closes the gap and then his lips are on Dean’s and whatever self-depreciating reply he was going to respond with has completely flown out of his mind. Dean’s eyes widen and his jaw locks and he moves his face instinctively away from the sheer shock of the force Cas had kissed him with. As soon as he loses contact though, he’s chasing Cas’ lips back, his eyes slipping closed as he re-angles his face and moans quietly.

Cas smiles and Dean loves the way it feels against his own lips and even more when he smiles in return. Dean’s hand is placed on Cas’ waist and he’s not exactly sure when that happened but now his grip is tightening, pulling Cas closer, as close as he can until he’s flush against Dean’s own body.

Cas is warm and cosy and feels like home and it’s like a floodgate opens within Dean after years of repressed emotion and unresolved tension. Dean tries to channel all of his thoughts and emotions into kissing Cas back, and Dean thinks Cas must understand because he responds with passion and ferocity and Dean is breathless.

They break apart, but don’t go far, Dean still holding Cas’ waist as if he would disappear if he let go and Cas is gently carding the hair at the nape of Dean’s neck and he isn’t sure when that happened either but he leans into the touch anyway.

After a few moments of stillness, when Dean has had some time to collect his thoughts, he says, “that was you up there, wasn’t it?” It’s not spoken as a question. “That’s where you’ve been going the whole time.”

Cas nods.

When Dean closes his eyes and leans further into Cas’ shoulder, he opens his mouth as if to explain himself but Dean cuts him off with a soft kiss to his neck. “Don’t. I get it. You miss being up there.”

Cas pulls Dean’s head back slowly until they are catch eye contact, and he moves his hand to cup Dean’s cheek gently. "But I miss _you_ more."

 “Cas.” Dean whispers, barely audible as he leans in to bring their lips back together, more confident this time but no less urgent. “Please stay with me.”

Cas leans his forehead against Dean’s.

“For as long as you’ll have me.” He whispers.

“Promise?” Dean asks, looking away from Cas’ eyes to his lips.

“I promise.” The sincerity in his voice makes Dean’s eyes shoot up, his mouth falling open ever so slightly. Their relationship is flawed by betrayal and broken promises that have left cracks so deep is a miracle they are still standing, but in that moment, Dean is certain that Cas means to keep this promise with everything that he is.

And for now, nothing else matters.


End file.
